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out. I whipped back around and discovered a note on my desk. I recognized Cassie’s loopy, artistic scrawl.
    Goner was all it said.
    For the rest of the period, I felt eyes on the back of my neck. The clock above the blackboard ticked slower than normal. Cassie’s pen scritch-scratched music notes across her paper. She tapped her foot against the side of her chair in rhythm. I was dying for the bell to ring.
    And then suddenly it did.
    “Catch you later,” Cassie said with a wink toward the boys as she slipped past me. She had Music Theory after homeroom on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so she never stuck around to chat on those days. Today, I knew there was a reason why she wanted to leave me alone.
    “So I think your reputation for never being late to class is safe.” I glanced up from slipping the ski itinerary packet between the covers of my notebook. Asher looked as though he’d accomplished world peace. Behind him, Devin was hovering warily, like he was expecting to have to jump his cousin at any moment. I wasn’t used to so much animosity and distrust. It seemed particularly odd that two guys who were related to each other would so openly dislike each other.
    “Yeah, so how did you know about that?” I asked.
    Devin stiffened, his zen totally gone now. Apparently he wasn’t comfortable with the direction the conversation was going. Or maybe he just didn’t like that I was talking to his cousin.
    Asher just gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Like I said. A reputation is something that everybody knows.”
    I narrowed my eyes.
    So kids at school were talking about my never-tardy record? I was pretty sure that wasn’t happening. “Yeah, well, in keeping with my reputation, I need to get to my next class. And, guys, seriously, see someone about your anger issues. Even when you’re just sitting next to each other, I can tell that you’re battling something out. It’s not healthy.”
    I stuffed my notebook into my backpack and walked away.
    I thought I’d have at least a class or two to think about my reaction to the new guys before I could run everything by Cassie at lunch—but just seconds after I walked through the door to Spanish, Devin did, too. He parked himself two seats behind me and the next row over. Which, as everyone knows, is the perfect spot for covert flirting: passing a note down the row, “accidental” pencil-dropping with the casual glance behind you, piling your hair on top of your head and then letting it cascade in seductive tangles down your back. I’d seen Cassie run through the entire arsenal. But I stayed rock-still in my seat, not daring to turn around, hardly even daring to breathe . I could tell, just tell, that he was watching me. It bugged me. I wasn’t that fascinating.
    If this was some weird kind of cousin rivalry—see who could get the girl first at the new school—I wasn’t playing the game. Let them fight it out. It seemed to be something they liked to do anyway.
    Of course, Asher showed up to third-period history. He said and did nothing, but his mere presence at the back of the classroom prevented me from absorbing any of the important dates of World War I. And in fourth-period chemistry, I got so distracted by not paying attention to Devin at the next lab table that I let my glucose solution bubble over the top of my test tube and spill all over the place.
    By lunchtime, if you’d asked me to recount the event that started World War I or balance the equation for the solution that I’d spilled in chem, I’d have had no clue what you were talking about. These distractions were going to have to stop.
    I spotted Dan at our usual table, a slice of pizza just visible under a Jenga tower of French fries on his plate. I hurried through the lunch line—grabbing along the way a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich and an apple—and weaved through a maze of tables to get to him. When I dropped into the seat across from him, I felt like I pulled the weight of the world